"BUREUCRATIA" in Budapest – the Labyrinth of EU Regulation

One year has passed since the Prime Minister’s Business Taskforce presented its findings on Cutting EU Red Tape. Since then, the UK Government has been working hard, with partners in European capitals and in Brussels, to reduce the burden of inefficient or unnecessary EU regulation faced by European companies. The one year on report sets out how we’ve done. Here in Hungary, we’ve also been working hard to grow support from the Hungarian Government and businesses for this effort.

Yesterday, we opened “BUREUCRATIA” – a labyrinth representing an imaginary city – in one of Budapest’s major squares. We Hungarians don’t have a literal translation for ‘red tape’. We rather say “bürokrácia útvesztője” – the ‘labyrinth of bureaucracy’. So that’s what our installation depicts.  We wanted to catch Hungarians’ attention and raise awareness of the harmful effects that inappropriate, burdensome EU legislation can cause for businesses, especially for SMEs. It is obvious that the barriers UK SMEs face when doing business in an overly regulated, risk-averse EU legislative environment affect not only British companies, but SMEs all over the EU, including Hungary. 

Our imaginary city demonstrates, through the life of BUREUCRATIA’s citizens, how difficult it can be to do business in an overly restrictive legal environment. The installation was opened yesterday by British Ambassador Jonathan Knott and State Secretary for Economic Regulation, Béla Glattfelder from the Ministry for National Economy. Our guests included senior government officials, prominent business leaders, the European Commission’s representation in Hungary, associations and institutes and of course, the media.

After yesterday’s opening ceremony, “BUREUCRATIA” will be open to the public for two days. Through simple explanations and visual illustrations, visitors entering the maze can learn in an informal and engaging way about the effects of various EU rules and how they can confuse businesses or cause them unnecessary problems. The topics tackled are:

• prescriptive requirements on data protection,
• inflexible and unclear rules on working time,
• costly official controls on food and animals,
• unnecessary rules on SMEs transporting a small amount of waste,
• the lack of a fully functioning digital single market in the EU
• and uncompetitive crop protection rules

The launch of our maze was just the beginning of a wider network series. Now BUREUCRATIA will travel across Central Europe over the next half year.

Watch how BUREUCRATIA was built: